


No Man's Land

by Carbon65



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky doesn't know who he is anymore, Character Study, Dubious medical consent, Identity Issues, Unreliable naration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-18
Updated: 2014-04-18
Packaged: 2018-01-19 20:42:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1483204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carbon65/pseuds/Carbon65
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His traitorous hand traces the planes of the face in photograph stuck inside the frame of the mirror. Sgt James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes looks so much like he does, and yet the face is entirely alien.</p><p>The Winter Soldier struggles with who he is and what was done to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Man's Land

He knows the face in the mirror: a killer’s cold hard eyes; chin length brown hair; a determined, square jaw. He reaches out his right hand, and traces his fingers over the stubble on his reflection.

He knows the body in the mirror. It’s lean and hard and muscular, a honed weapon, even without his metallic left arm. The scars around the shoulder are livid red, and stand out against his skin. He sees the bullet wound in his abdomen, where someone long ago shot him. The knife scar, where they tried to separate his intestines from the rest of him. The line of ugly white needle marks at the inside of his arm, from months and years of drugs he does not know. His left arm is bound to his chest in a sling, obscuring the silver and the scar over his heart.

His traitorous hand -  they’re both traitorous but his left arm isn’t moving today- traces the planes of the face in the photograph stuck inside the frame of the mirror. Sgt James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes looks so much like he does, and yet the face is entirely alien. It’s the face of a boy. Although, perhaps when Barnes died in 1945, three years after this photograph was taken, he wasn’t such a boy anymore. He knows it for a fact: Bucky Barnes died in that frozen river on the German-Polish border.

He doesn’t know who he is. He doesn’t know what he is. He doesn’t truly remember anything before the fight with Captain America and the destruction of SHIELD. He has flickering memories, more like the remnants of dreams.

There is water, a burning icy hell in his lungs and his veins. His left arm is numb, and the rest of him is being pricked by pins and needles.  
They wake him up, and his left arm is gone, or he thinks it’s gone. His chest and his shoulder are awash with pain.  
They feed him. They keep him clothed. He fights when they tell him to. He kills when they tell him to. He cannot escape. He cannot hold onto enough of his memories to know anything but this.   
Time passes in skips and bursts. One moment it’s 1993 and he’s just carried out an job in om Yugoslavia, except the world moves too fast and it’s not Yugoslavia anymore.   
Then, it's 2009 and he's in Budapest with orders to assassinate a politician and tell no one. Its not an easy job. It gets harder when he's almost caught by that blond archer, and he has to turn the archer over to support team to be tortured.  
Today, he’s not sure why he got out of bed. Something is wrong. He feels feverish. The pain was bad enough that he couldn’t sleep, not that he sleeps much anymore. He doesn’t trust the idea of laying back and closing his eyes. He doesn’t trust the idea letting himself go unconscious. He doesn't trust the idea of having untold hours pass. He doesn’t trust that he will be safe from ... he doesn’t know.

He lets his hand fall away from the mirror, away from the photograph. He turns away from the mirror, away from the stranger he sees there.

He pauses before he puts on clothes.

He could go back and lay in bed until the pain fades. He could drift in that dangerous place between myth and memory where his child-like mind is able to wonder. He’s read the term _Monkey Mind_ in his explorations of the library.   
He’s seen monkeys, once. It was hot, so hot, and the air carried a perfume. They were at a resort, or a compound. Monkeys in the trees. Monkeys in the compound. Monkey blood on the tile. Alive, monkeys flit from thing to thing. His mind is a monkey mind, moving until something kills it.   
He doesn’t want to be trapped in the hell of his Monkey Mind, where his thoughts play a game like Monkey in the Middle and keep him captive.

He could get dressed, and go somewhere. Except that going out will mean dropping his sling and facing the pain that will come with powering his arm back up. He wonders if HYDRA, or the KGB, or whoever it was that had him before he came here, injected an anesthetic or a paralytic into him when they knocked him out. Everytime he uses his arm now, it feels like someone is trying to light him on fire. He cannot remove the arm, so he does what people with normal joints and injuries do: he keeps it tight against his chest.

He does not want to stay. He does not want to hurt.

Pants are easy. Socks are easy.

Shoes are a challenge without two hands, but someone started putting zippers in boots. He could kiss the person who put zippers into boots.

He unhooks the sling, and pulls the long sleeve over his unresponsive arm. He gets the shirt over his head without choking himself. He feeds both arms through the dark jacket.

He waits for the wave of dizzying pain to pass. He might heal faster than most, but that doesn’t mean he is immune to pain.

He pulls a baseball cap low over his head.

He finds the orange bottle of pills next to the sink. He wedges the bottle against his hip and the counter, uncapping it gently. He shakes two pills out, onto the laminate, and fills a glass of water from the tap. Someone once left him a strange clear pitcher and a pamphlet about filtering, but he does not use it.

He picks up the dead man’s wallet and puts it in his pocket.

Someone had left him the wallet, a small pile of bills and the keys to an apartment among his belongings when he was released from the prison/hospital where they were holding him. Someone pays the rent on this place, pays the utilities, and leaves him a tidy amount in an  account they opened in the dead man’s name. Someone left him maps, left him take-out menus, left him books. Most days, he stays at home and reads.

The text chime chirps on his cell phone, and he swipes across the face to see the message. The someone who provided the apartment also gives him orders. And, for that, he is ever thankful. He may not know who is. He may have a dead man’s face and a dead man’s home and a dead man’s money. He may have an arm that is more than likely trying to kill him.

But, somewhere inside, he knows what he is. He is a soldier without an army. He is a killer without a target. He is a paradox. He doesn’t know how to be anything else.

**Author's Note:**

> I really wanted to write *something* after I saw Captain America, and this is what came out of it. I'm considering expanding into a longer work, which actually has a plot and storyline... I just have to figure out if I'll ever have time.


End file.
